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Wednesday, September 07, 2016

Federal welfare programs give freely and demand little

Americans, it is said, are the most generous people in the
world. We give to our friends and neighbors and fellow countrymen when they
need help, of course, but we also help those who live thousands of miles away
in other countries.

We are quick to provide a “hand up” to Americans in need, to
help them over rough spots and get them back on their feet so that they can
then take care of themselves. There are those who for various reasons are
unable to help themselves, and we don’t mind continuing to provide assistance
for them.

The hand up is sometimes called a “safety net,” a device to
save those truly in need from falling into despair. But for many the safety net
has turned into a hammock, no longer a device to help out in an emergency or
time of trouble, but an easy way of life for those who would rather let others
provide for them than provide for themselves.

This is sometimes a matter of availing themselves of a good
opportunity, while at other times it is a matter of culture: Far too many
Americans have been taught through actual experience that it is not so
difficult to live off the government and charitable interests.

A friend taught a class in the 80s in a junior high school whose
student body had a not-so-good reputation for academic achievement. He told the
story about his first six-week grading period, using a grading system that was
designed to reward honest effort as much as a grasp of the subject matter to
get a passing grade. Of the 37 students in his class, half failed; only a few earned
decent grades.

When he asked them how they were going to survive after they
grew up and were on their own, if they were unable to get a passing grade in a
class designed to guarantee passing if you just made an honest effort, one of
the students said: “Well, Mr. Smith, I’m going to do like my parents: be on
welfare.” That career choice surprised him, and so did the agreement of many of
the other students.

This situation, mirrored in towns and cities across the
nation, is the result not of the “hand up” efforts of caring Americans, but of hammock-like
government welfare programs, which give much but demand little.

President Lyndon Johnson declared a War on Poverty in
the January 1964 State of the Union address. “This administration today, here
and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America,” Johnson stated.

His actual stated goal was not to prop
up living standards artificially through an ever-expanding welfare state, but
instead to strike “at the causes, not just the consequences of poverty.”
Ultimately, he wanted “not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure
it and, above all, to prevent it.” A noble goal, as so many government
initiatives are, at least at first.

Twenty years ago, another president pledged to “end welfare
as we know it.” On August 22, 1996, President Bill Clinton filled a campaign
promise by signing welfare reform, the Personal Responsibility and Work
Opportunity Act, into law.

This time there were new wrinkles: after two years of
receiving benefits, welfare recipients would be required to work, and incentives
were removed that encouraged having children out of wedlock and breaking up
families to get benefits. There was also a five-year lifetime limit on total
time of receiving benefits without working.

How have these programs worked out? Familyfacts.org reported
in 2012, “Total federal and state welfare spending has increased more
than 16-fold since 1964. Even since the 1996 welfare reform replaced Aid to
Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) with the Temporary Assistance for Needy
Families (TANF) program, spending has increased by 76 percent and by more than
20 percent since 2008.”

President Obama, the Washington Examiner reports, “took the
Great Recession as an opportunity to get as many households as possible into
the food stamp program, an important part of his stimulus package. One result
was that the number of able-bodied adults with no children who receive food
assistance doubled.”

Because the value of food stamps and welfare payments are looked
at as income, the overall poverty rate has not changed much since the War on
Poverty began. However, both the number of Americans on welfare and total
welfare spending have soared.

The goal should be to reduce both poverty and welfare
spending. Two states, Kansas and Maine, have implemented a requirement for
able-bodied childless adults to work for food-stamp benefits, and the results
are impressive.

In Maine, 80 percent of those affected by the requirement
left the food stamp program, and in Kansas, the total of those affected dropped
75 percent very quickly, and 60 percent had work within a year, according to
the Examiner.

When it was easy to stay home and collect food benefits,
many were happy to do so. But when required to work, these recipients quickly
got out of the hammock and went to work, abandoning government support.

People are often content to do as little as possible, but
will do what they must.